Social media is a great opportunity to honor people in our lives. By nature, social media sites allow us to broadcast anything to large crowds of friends. While voicing words of appreciation to the person we are thankful for is powerful, affirming them to a large crowd of people further illustrates our gratitude. By giving shout-outs to people we are thankful for, they are instantly recognized to a large group.
Why: There are many different people in our lives we recognize for a variety of reasons. Churches may want to honor certain members involved in the organization’s activities, mission trips, or outreach projects. Families may want to give thanks to other congregation members who have helped them through a hard time. Or, someone might just have something nice to say about another church member that they didn’t have a chance to tell them during service – a simple “you looked very nice today” spreads love in the congregation. Twitter is the perfect medium for this type of conversation.
How: You can tweet something to someone on twitter by typing a tweet with their Twitter handle in, like this: @username. This is called a ‘mention’ on twitter. Each time you mention someone, your entire following can see it and that person specifically gets notified.
Examples of Current mentions:
1) Here is a current example of a Twitter user who thanked someone through a mention:
2) Here are examples of re-tweets from people who mentioned MarsHill or MarsHill members
